JERUSALEM  (AFP) – Two Israeli ministers on Friday lashed out at an impassioned speech given by Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas as he petitioned the United Nations to accept a Palestinian state as a member.

“This speech was a real incitement to violence,” Israel’s ultra-nationalist Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman told Channel 10 television in New York.

His speech “proves that the Palestinians have no intention of negotiating with Israel and that their proposals (to that end) are merely rhetoric,” Lieberman said.

Education Minister Gideon Saar, a close ally of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, described Abbas’s address to the UN General Assembly as “venomous.”

He said Netanyahu, who was to give his address shortly afterwards, would “certainly not give such a venomous speech.”

In his address, Abbas said Israel’s settlement policy would “destroy” any chances of achieving a two-state solution, and said he would return to negotiations only if the Israelis agreed to freeze settlement activity and recognise the 1967 lines as being the basis for any future talks.

Lieberman has in the past warned of “tough and serious consequences” and even raised the idea of cancelling key agreements signed between the two sides in response to a Palestinian demand for UN membership.

In particular, he has suggested the Palestinian bid could mean the end of the economic cooperation agreed in the 1994 Paris Accords, under which Israel transfers Palestinian tax and tariff receipts to the Palestinians.